Officer posed as girl, 13, online to catch predator
A MAN was caught trying to meet up with someone he thought was a 13-yearold girl he was talking to online but was actually an undercover police officer.
Steven Phillip Morris began chatting to a profile purporting to be a teenager but it was actually an undercover police officer using a pseudonym. Morris led the discussion across various social media platforms and maintained contact with the decoy account, asking whether she “liked older guys” and whether her parents knew she chatted to strangers.
He told the decoy profile he thought they were “really lovely and sexy for their age” and stated she had a “gorgeous smile and sexy eyes”.
He turned the conversation to a potential meet-up where they, in his words, “could do anything”, Swansea Crown Court heard, telling her he “fancied her a lot”.
He told her he would drive from Exeter to meet her and that they could “go up the valley and kiss and cuddle”.
The conversation became more sexual and he told her he was “super turned on” by her. He stated in the conversation he was “paranoid it was a trap but was fine with her age”.
He said: “I want to make sure you’re real and not an adult pretending to be a girl. I’ve been caught before LOL so please don’t take offence.”
At one point he noted he was older than the decoy’s mother’s partner. He left Exeter to meet in an agreed location in Pontypridd – a two-hour journey.
He told the profile that if anyone asked about him when they met she should say he was her dad. When he arrived he was arrested by police. His mobile was seized and the communications discovered.
At the time of the offending he was subject to a sexual harm prevention order with a condition that he was not to be in communication with anyone under the age of 18.
He was interviewed on October 15 and made admissions to having access to the account and texts. He said his actions were due to a lack of intimacy with his wife and he wanted to “quell his sexual urges online”.
Morris, 58, of Gowerton Road, Penclawdd, Swansea, admitted attempting to communicate sexually by making reference to sexual acts and making arrangements to carry out those acts with a 13-year-old pseudonym female on October 12 earlier this year. He had also admitted attempting to engage in communication and attempting to meet the girl for sexual activity two days later despite being prohibited from doing so by a sexual harm prevention order made by Swansea Crown Court on July 30, 2018.
Paul Hobson, mitigating, said: “The best points in reality are his guilty pleas at the earliest opportunity, combined with that this is not a defendant who is in denial about what he has done and the offences he has committed and how serious they are.”
Judge Paul Thomas QC told the defendant: “Last month you thought you were in online communication with a girl aged 13. That communication became – deliberately on your part – very sexually explicit. You travelled from Exeter to this area to meet who you thought was that 13-year-old girl. In the event, there was no such individual – it was a decoy. When you arrived in South Wales you were in fact arrested. In 2018 you were given a suspended sentence for very similar matters.
“It is clear from what I have read about you that you are an intelligent man. Some of the comments you made in the conversation online about knowing of the risks of decoys, in my view, don’t show a man who was too unintelligent or too naive to realise he was being set up.
“They show a man who is simply unable to control himself, taking risks to seek sexual gratification, even though he knows he could be walking into a trap. In other words, a man who cannot control his urges. In my view, you are clearly a dangerous offender.”
Morris was given a nine-year extended sentence, four of which will be spent in prison.
He was placed on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely and was given a sexual harm prevention order for 10 years.